Time and taxis

“We went past it twice,” says Coogan.

On a similar note, I would like to thank the taxi drivers of Trinidad and Tobago for facilitating my knowledge of the country, and particularly the back streets, down which they nip on their lifelong mission to avoid junctions and congestion.

When I first lived in Tobago and had to have an overnight stay in Port-of-Spain, the owner of the little hotel I phoned gave me a tip: don’t use the regular taxis, because they’re expensive. She described how to get from the boat to Woodford Square, where I would find the kind of taxis that you share with three or four other people and which ply a set route, which makes them more like very small buses.

You have to be careful, though, because although most of the drivers are honest, some are not. There is one, for instance, who cruises around slowly, very gently pipping his horn to attract attention, so desperate is he to fill the space in his tired family-size Nissan. And woe betide you if you don’t have the correct money, because this man doesn’t give change. Hand him a larger note and it disappears into his pocket with nothing coming in the other direction.

Having acquired a car in which to criss-cross Tobago, it became my own mission to learn how to get around, while avoiding crashing into the back of the selfsame cabs, whose habit it is to pull up immediately, without warning and without pulling into the side of the road. If somebody wants them to stop, they stop, right there, right then.

It must be a boring way to earn a living, going up and down the same roads all the time, so maybe slamming on the anchors and challenging the rest of us to avoid them adds spice to their existence.

The traditional taxi driver, though, faces no such boredom, because he is constantly trying to outwit everyone else. Although at first it seems as if they are pulling the wool over your gullible, recently- arrived eyes, the fact that they never seem to be going the right way may in fact be proof of their innate cunning. There is always traffic at junctions, so they will turn left just before one and then take the first right, or vice versa. On a chess board, if articulated lorries are the queens and motorbikes the bishops, taxis are knights, taking small detours, achieving results by doing unexpected things.

In this respect they are the antithesis of satnav, that tediously literal, uninventive dictator who knows the route because it’s obvious. Follow the satnav’s instructions and you’re going the same way as everyone else. What the expert local driver knows is not just that certain roads are congested at times, but at what times. He may even have inside knowledge of parties, weddings, funerals and other special events that are going to make a particular area a nightmare on one particular occasion.

If such a driver were to develop his or her own satnav, the vocal instructions would have to be laced with clarifications such as “You’re not going to believe this…” or “I know this sounds crazy, but…”.

On one such trip recently, with the destination being a building just outside the really busy part of town, the driver actually went into the growling, exhaust-filled maelstrom just long enough to get going the right way up a one-way street that had seemed destined to spoil everyone’s fun – or in my case make me late, and if there is one thing I hate it’s that. “Nauseatingly punctual” is an expression that covers it, and those of us who suffer from it are, of course, living in the wrong place, in a geographical area which laughs off its lack of respect for schedules with the concept of “island time”.

Even I, though, had to tip my hat to a woman I knew briefly in the UK. When I warned her that I would be picking her up at exactly eight o’clock because that’s just how I am, she said, “That’s okay, I’m the same. I think ten minutes early is late.” But I digress, which is perhaps a strange thing for a punctualist to do. While taking taxis obviously costs money, at least it saves the cost of buying local newspapers, because the drivers know what’s going on, even if it is often delivered from a rather jaundiced viewpoint.

Election time? This guy has his finger on the pulse – and that pulse is pretty weak, he will tell you.

Ha n g on a minute: didn’t we just pass the Eiffel Towe r ? Wh a t ’s going on here?